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Reflections and Anticipation

As I begin my second year as Editor, I would like to reflect on the accomplishments of the Editorial Board of Volume 32 and the experience that has been gained by serving one year as the editor of a refereed journal. We continued the tradition of publishing high quality manuscripts that cover a wide range of topics related to industrial teacher education. As any reader of the Journal quickly recognizes, we view industrial teacher education very broadly. We published manuscripts that were vocationally-oriented for trade, industrial, and technical education, others that were related to the general education views in technology education, and still others that addressed human resource development issues in the private sector. Recognizing the relationships among these diverse topic areas has been a fundamental philosophic position of NAITTE since its founding in 1937 and will continue to be advanced in this volume of the Journal.

We also made advances into the electronic communications age. The Editorial Board now communicates via e-mail and almost every referee is now able to submit their reviews electronically. This has increased our efficiency and has reduced the time it takes to complete the review process. With the assistance of the Scholarly Communications Project at Virginia Tech, we are now providing worldwide access to the full electronic text of the Journal (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/jite.html). We also entered into an agreement with the H. W. Wilson Company to further expand the means of accessing the contents of the Journal by providing full text availability through their Education Index database.

As we begin work on Volume 33, we are developing our plan of work for the coming year. When the Editorial Board meets at the American Vocational Association conference in December, I anticipate that the major efforts of the Board will be to further enhance electronic access to the Journal, to examine the financial and professional impact of an electronic journal on the field, and to enhance the diversity of the Journal Board and referees. Although our major role is to continue to produce a quality scholarly journal for the field, these efforts can only enhance the quality, impact, and utility of the Journal of Industrial Teacher Education.

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with such a great group of professionals who contribute so much of their time reviewing manuscripts for the Journal. The list of reviewers for the Journal was published in the fourth issue of Volume 32 and reads like a list of Who's-Who in the field of industrial teacher education. The majority of these reviewers will continue to serve in this capacity to ensure that the Journal remains one of the strongest scholarly journals in the field. I am pleased to announce that a new Editorial Board officially took office on July 1. This new Board has several continuing members as well as three new Assistant Editors. First, I would like to welcome Jeffrey Flesher, Southern Illinois University; Reynaldo Martinez, Oklahoma State University; and Steven Petrina, North Carolina State University; to the Editorial Board for Volume 33. These three individuals distinguished themselves through their contributions as reviewers for the Journal. I knew that when manuscripts were sent to them for review, I would receive feedback that was extensive, thoughtful, and revealing. I look forward to expanding my working relationship with them on the Editorial Board. Rod Custer, University of Missouri-Columbia, will continue to serve as Associate Editor and will begin his transition to the position of Editor. I also am looking forward to working with the continuing Assistant Editors Brian McAlister, Pittsburg State University, and Charles Linnell, Clemson University. Sarah Smith Duncan will continue to serve as Style Editor. The contribution of the Style Editor to the Journal cannot be underestimated. Sarah works tirelessly to ensure that the manuscripts that are eventually published in the Journal are well written and conform to the style of the American Psychological Association.

The completion of Volume 32 has been a great learning experience. An Editor is fortunate to have the opportunity to see, first hand, the most recent scholarly work in the field. The breadth of the topics being addressed in the field is impressive. It is also a fascinating opportunity to work with both the referees and the authors to strengthen manuscripts and prepare them for publication.

In This Issue

Four featured articles are included in this issue. The first article, by Jerome Moss and Qetler Jensrud, summarizes the results of a series of research studies on leadership in vocational education. In this article, the authors look at gender-related differences among vocational administrators in terms of leadership assessment, leadership performance, and gender bias. The second article, by Tim Hatcher, identifies differences in perceived work ethic between apprentices and instructors. He also looks at the relationship between years of full-time work experience and degree of perceived work ethic. As more programs invest in distance learning-based teacher education programs, questions arise regarding the effectiveness of the technology and the most appropriate way to implement new delivery methods. The third article, by Nelson Foell and Robert Fritz, explores this area by examining the relationship between cognitive style and students' satisfaction with distance learning technologies. In the final article, Theodore Lewis examines three institutions that have implemented workplace literacy programs. These case studies show that vocational institutions are able to provide such services although he is not sure if they have a comparative workplace literacy advantage over other providers.

The At Issue section contains an essay by Jeffrey Flesher. Flesher describes a recent conference for employees of a large multinational corporation that focused on education and training issues. Flesher contends that these private sector conferences have direct relevance for industrial and technical educators and argues for increased representation by members of our profession. Under Review includes two book reviews. The first, by Susan Pavalko and Yvonne Gentzler, is a review of the Sadker's book entitled Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls. The second, by Aldo Jackson, is a review of Gray and Herr's recent book Other Ways to Win: Creating Alternatives for High School Graduates. Finally, Bits and Pieces contains its usual items related to submitting manuscripts to the Journal, becoming a NAITTE member, and ordering various NAITTE publications.

SDJ

Author

Johnson is Editor, Journal of Industrial Teacher Education, Vols. 32 and 33, and Associate Professor, Department of Vocational and Technical Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.